


chocolate drops

by insectoid_demigoddess



Category: Paradox Live (Albums), パラライ | Paradox Live (Albums)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Other, Paradox Live White Day Event ([EN] ParaLive!), no club paradox no powers just college students with crushes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:26:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23150143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insectoid_demigoddess/pseuds/insectoid_demigoddess
Summary: for [EN] ParaLive!'s White Day Eventon valentine's day, allen had received an unexpected gift. in the weeks leading up to white day, he gives his all to finding the perfect reply.[ allen/oc ]
Relationships: Allen Sugasano/Original Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	chocolate drops

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lechefrita](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lechefrita).



> for [leche](https://twitter.com/lechefrita_) from the EN paralive disc, for the white day event

The fourteenth of March looms closer in Allen's periphery. In glittery pink ink, the date is dotted with hearts on the personalized calendar Anne had given him for Christmas. There's a note from Hajun on his planner app that reminds him to start looking for gifts two weeks before (he muted that), one week before (that, too), and three days before (he hasn't muted that yet). Allen looks away from the corner of his desk that pays homage to his friends' often-grating but wholly well-meaning concern, and lets his gaze fall on the one incongruence at his desk.

At odds with the sleek blacks and chromes of his desktop setup, a red ribbon holds together the folded length of his favorite headphones. It had been a part of a gift that Allen had been given. He'd thrown out the delicate tissue and the nondescript cardboard box after finishing the chocolate drops nestled inside.

There were a dozen pieces, split evenly between normal chocolate and strawberry, and despite having never quite leaned towards either flavors, he'd eaten them all, hardly thinking of leaving some to share. That had been a month ago, and despite occasionally being fed sweets by Anne or Hajun, he hadn't quite wanted to finish any of the others the same way.

Staring at the ribbon brought up another memory, too - the one that Allen was currently grappling with, tangentially. Hidden underneath the caddy of spare data sticks in the left hand drawer of his desk is a letter. It's long since lost the scent of chocolates and perfume, but the writing remains pristine - small, rounded-script, by a hand that's practiced and neat. The name at the bottom was familiar; Allen's seen their pieces around the college, stared at them wondering if they'd ever want to collaborate on an EP cover.

There had been none of the hesitance that Allen sometimes spies in his own hand, instead there's an earnest boldness in each line, from first to last:

[ _I hope you can accept my feelings, even if you don't return them_

 _\- Lee_ ].

The tips of Allen's ears burn red at the memory. He wrenches his gaze from where it had fallen to his drawer and forces himself back to the task at hand.

...

 _thup thup thup_ goes the eraser at the end of Allen's pencil as it bounces off the blank music sheets. It had been nearly half an hour since he'd started today's contemplation, and, like the other days, he had a grand output of _nothing_.

 _thup, thup-thup._ He refuses to count the days. If he did that, he'd absolutely never get any work done. Though thinking of it as work leaves a sour taste on his tongue - this was different from the exercises at school, and different too from the tracks he'd make up for the fledgling group he and his friends were raising to someday take a stage--

 _thup-thup, thup-thup._ He can't get distracted. This task was - is important. He'd already blocked the day off, turned deaf ears to his friends' pestering, and did away with other distractions. If he couldn't even come up with a _chorus_ \---

Allen's pencil flies out from his fingers and sails merrily in an impressive arc over his head.

He curses.

…

The reminder that Hajun had set in Allen's phone for one week before White Day is muted. Allen spends the start of the 7-day mark slightly more irritable than usual, muttering as he jots down notes on the backs of handouts and keeping a stubborn arm over them when his friends poke at him for a look.

His free time after classes and group meetings is taken up by the blank, judgmental stare of music sheets. Once, he deliberately turns his back on the sheets and fools around with his sound pad, to what he thought was slightly better results ( _anything_ was better than _nothing_ at this point), before he'd listened to his efforts and summarily deleted them from existence.

Allen thinks of the letter, still hidden in his drawer.

Still not good enough.

…

Hajun asks, gently, as they waited for the vending machine to release their drinks, "Does it _need_ to have lyrics?"

Allen, running on about two sleepless nights and a deadline of three days, nods curtly.

"I owe them that much."

He misses when he swipes at the tumble of bottled drinks in the hollow of the vending machine; Hajun sighs, before picking up his fizzy, strawberry-flavored drink and opening it for him.

…

"The easy way," Anne had begun, days after February 14 and the quiet frenzy of Allen stuffing his face with handmade chocolate drops (though she wouldn't have known about the latter), "is to buy them something."

 _But_ , Allen thinks, _I wouldn't do something as half-assed as that_.

"But you're Allen, and you wouldn't do something as half-assed as that," Anne says, smiling at him fondly, even as she messes up his hair.

"You could make them chocolates, too," is another suggestion. Allen refuses, on principle, to gift anyone with a culinary disaster. That he has a month to practice the skill is immaterial, it just wouldn't do to give something he couldn't be proud of.

Instead of saying, _you're taking this too seriously_ , like Allen knows Anne would want to say - it's not a real sentiment, it's a joke with a half truth buried in it, an observation of how he functions filtered through gentle teasing - he gets a supportive smattering of pats on his head, a fresh pad of blank paper, and a playlist of ambient sounds that don't distract him more than he does himself.

…

On Valentine's day, Allen had agreed to postpone practice for practical reasons: a) Hajun's trek from his classroom to the dorm would be akin to dodging landmines in a battle field; and, b) Anne had her own Agenda™ which none of them were allowed to ask about but which Allen knew had to involve the high school department and _nothing else_ , _stop asking me Hajun_.

Amidst the excitement swirling around him, Allen had made his way to his locker without any personal fanfare. The date hadn't meant anything special to him, and he hadn't felt more than a flushed face's worth of embarrassment when his friends had piled sweets on his desk the night before. If anything, he looked forward to the day after, when chocolate prices would plummet and he could grab a few bars to bribe Anne with on a cheaper budget.

But when he'd opened his locker, there was something sitting inside that hadn't been there the day before.

A letter in a sealed envelope. A box, of some sort, he'd assumed, wrapped in delicate paper and a red ribbon.

Closing and opening his locker had not removed the sight of the gift. That ruled out some form of hallucination. So did picking the gifts up and stuffing them into his backpack.

It was even less of a strange fugue his brain had come up with because of deadline-stress when he unwraps the gift and finds the box filled with chocolate drops - milk chocolate and strawberry-chocolate. They're gone in half an hour and Allen washes his hands before opening the letter.

The day after, Allen stared at the shelves of discount chocolate and left without buying a single one.

...

March 14. At a row of lockers far from Allen's. Nearly a full hour before classes start. The CD case in his hand is far from "out of the ordinary" (some may even call it "dated"), but it still feels like he's standing there with the biggest, flashiest sign above his head, "Barely Made The Deadline".

This is it. There's no Hajun or Anne to hype him up, only Allen and his thoughts burned into a CD that Lee may not even get to listen to -- he'd never stooped to ferreting out their schedule, he wasn't a _stalker_ , but now that he thinks about it, there was no evidence to say that they had the same schedule or anything like that at all.

He was stalling, Allen knew. He had to do this - right then and there, now or never.

"..."

The CD wouldn't fit through the slats.

He curses.

…

More than half an hour later, Allen stands further down the hallway, half-hidden by the turn, watching as Lee approaches their locker. He swallows against the nervousness climbing up his throat. He swallows again as he takes a step, then several in uneven fits and starts, until he stands in polite distance. Lee only notices him when he mangles their name, and they stand there, both red in the face for reasons Allen can't even try to guess at.

He must have taken too many breaths, because now even words are struggling to leave his tongue. Allen holds out the CD, Lee's name scrawled on the case, the date a tentative addendum under it.

Finally, he manages: "For the chocolate drops."

.

.

.

♪ ♫

[ _Is this our fate_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RkGA4Hf5lk)

[ _Where do we go from here_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RkGA4Hf5lk)

[ _It's hard to fall apart_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RkGA4Hf5lk)

[ _I'll take my chances_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RkGA4Hf5lk)

[ _And try to make it happen_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RkGA4Hf5lk)

[ _I'll let you keep my heart_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RkGA4Hf5lk)

[ _A leap of faith so unmistakable_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RkGA4Hf5lk)

[ _And this is where we'll start_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RkGA4Hf5lk)

_♪ ♫_

**Author's Note:**

> <3 thanks to my betas who lent their objective eyes and told me what was up: vegipot and dumpling <3
> 
> \- posted a day late despite being gifted on time bc of who and what i am as a person uvu  
> \- chocolate discs?? chocolate drops??? i saw hershey kisses the first time i googled this. originally they were gonna be like, the range of chocolate flavors, but then i remembered the drinks collab they did once and allen's had strawberry sooooo!  
> \- allen was hard to write. his mental block transcended the writing realm,,  
> \- the song at the end is by a local band , they have a lot of nice (melancholic) songs and when i was in hs i had one of their CDs


End file.
